React, etc. Tech Stack

WordPress.com stole Ghost platform code, now accuses Wix for the same

Ghost is a blogging platform written in Node.js. It is fairly popular and a direct competitor to WordPress. Ghost also has a pleasing aesthetic.

So much so, that WordPress.com, a commercial entity, decided to take their default theme and use it. Without permission and explicitly breaking the licensing terms. OMG, evil corporation taking advantage of the organic artisan developer!

This story was just unearthed by John O'Nolan, the founder of Ghost, in the wake of the WordPress vs Wix brawl that is going on for GPL and code theft. This is the first time you've heard about this because it was handled behind the scenes without too much drama. Let alone the GPL lynch mob patrolling the web right now.

The story was published on Twitter after he had followed the WordPress-Wix case in the social media and elsewhere. In 2015 a WordPress developer accidentally forgot to include the MIT license in a commercial theme on the proprietary WordPress.com service ran by Automattic. This was handled neatly by making the theme compliant and everything was fine.

This is similar to the case that has been in the limelight lately, since by no means did Wix take whole of WordPress and copy it into their mobile application. In fact the component in question is actually an amalgamation of five more liberally licensed Open Source projects re-packaged under GPL.

So Wix developer took a component and made a mistake in re-distributing an application with GPL code in it. No conspiracy, no smoking gun. Maybe in the case of Wix and their flagship mobile app it was amateurish on their end, but the sabre clashing done here is unnecessary.

Read the whole story on how WordPress stole Ghost code, and why you only now hear about it. Expand the embedded tweet for a full recap on John O'Nolan's Twitter account:

1/ Guys. This WordPress-vs-Wix thing is ridiculous. Let me tell you a funny story: About a year ago I was reading a blog, and felt… déjà vu.